Month: August 2016

This year, August 20th was International Geocaching Day. I, along with my good geobuddy JAKSolantern, made the trip from New York up to Napanee, Ontario, Canada for the day to attend the Discover L&A County Geocaching Mega Event. Crossing the border into Canada was a bit stressful, but soon I arrived at the event and the caching began!

The main event location was at the Southview Public School, which was something I had never seen done before. On the wall right as you walk in there was a log sheet and a map to put a sticker of where you’re from. Upon entering the gymnasium, I was greeting by some lovely ladies at the welcome table. I signed in and they gave me some info about the lab caches and the new physical caches that were placed for the event. I purchased a few new geocoins from the vendors there and was on my way out to do some caching!

I thought it was appropriate to get some Canadian geocoins from this trip

One of my favorite caches was the L&A History Driving Wherigo (GC3N1JB). Wherigos are pretty rare where I live so I was excited to have the opportunity to find another. This one brought you around to 4 historic locations in Napanee. There were also other caches hidden at each site as well, so that was a bonus.

Napanee also features a unique set of waterfalls. And guess what kind of cache was there? An earthcache, of course! We stopped for awhile to enjoy the falls and collect the information required for The Falls of Napanee (GC23BV0). The breeze off of the falls was amazing on such a hot and humid day.

As I mentioned before, there were 10 lab caches associated with the event. One in particular was very fun. The question was “What crime do geocachers occasionally commit (by accident)?” I had to go into the museum and then I got arrested! I look way too happy about it, but hey, I got a geocache find out of it!

After doing some more caching in the area, I headed back to the event location. The group photo was scheduled to be taken at 4pm. I arrived a bit early so I was just mingling with other cachers and soon I spotted Signal!

After the group photo, everyone gathered as some prizes were given away. I even won a few! Shortly after, we decided to hit the road. It had been a long, but successful day. I got two souvenirs. One for finding a cache on International Geocaching Day and another for attending the Mega event.

Did you find a cache or attend an event on International Geocaching Day to earn your souvenir? Tell me about it in the comments!

This summer there are 3 new souvenirs you can earn (plus one for International Geocaching Day). Premium members will be sent a secret puzzle one week before the souvenir can be earned. Solving this puzzle will tell you exactly what you need to do to earn your shiny new souvenir. This gives the premium members a heads up and allows for a little extra planning that might be necessary.

Cachers could earn the first of the souvenirs by finding a geocaching with 10 or more favorite points on July 30 or 31.

My boyfriend and I had a trip to Cleveland planned for that weekend so I picked out a cache that was along our route home that would qualify for this. I chose “Auto Art” GCJ8M8, a virtual near Erie, Pennsylvania, which had over 400 favorite points.

When we pulled up I was blown away. There were 7 or 8 sculptures all made out of old cars or pieces of cars. There was a car that was turned into a bumblebee, one that was a gigantic spider and a dinosaur made out of various vehicle parts.

Did you get your souvenir? What cache did you find with 10 or more favorite points?

I made a short video clip of all the sculptures. You can check it out here.